Active, Pasive speaker, What's it about? KAM Soundforce5A

0:00 Maybe you need a lorry to carry them around

Let's see your speakers. Have you got some speakers? Are they powered? Are they non-powered? Are they big? Are they small? Are they fat? Are they thin? Do they fit in the back of your car? Maybe you need a lorry to carry them around. Possibly they're tiny little shelf speakers that you listen to your music through, or maybe they're huge monsters the size of doors. Well, it doesn't matter. Let's have a look at yours and tell us a little bit about them, so if you want to. Of course, if you want to chuck a video response underneath this one. But, for the meantime, I still get loads of people asking me about what speakers should I have. So, let's have a look at these guys. I've shown these in a previous video. These are from a company called Cam and they're known as the Soundforce 5A. 5A because they're active speakers. But they're active speakers with a difference because that is active and that is not.

1:31 Red, positive, black, negative

Yet they're a pair. So how does that work? Well first of all, this guy here has got amplifiers in it for this speaker and for this one. So let me explain something first of all. What happens is mains power will come in here. That's your switchy on and off button. You have controls for bass, treble and volume. And you can see those little plugs there. Red and black. Red, positive, black, negative. Now all that happens is simply like this. Mains power in here, audio in there, amplifiers in here. So in other words the power will power the internal amplifiers which in turn will power... All of this will make the sound a lot louder that comes through in here. So audio in here, amplifiers amplify that sound in turn makes it come out of here. But what happens is in this guy there's not just the amplifiers for this speaker, there's also the amplifiers for this one. So if we can see here we've got exactly the same switches there. These tiny little holes.

3:35 Monitors maybe, that kind of thing

And up to the camera, we can see there, that's positive and that's negative. Now something quite important but has got a lot of relevance. If we have a look at these cables you can see one with a line on it and one that hasn't got a line on it. Now we're going to class that one as positive, class that one as negative. It is vitally important to make sure you do this. There you go, that's the one with the line on it. Now I have to do exactly the same on the other side. The one with the line on the red there and the one without the line in the black. Now these guys here, like I said, powered speakers, ideally for home use. monitors maybe, that kind of thing. You would not take speakers like this to a mobile gig at all under no circumstance unless you're doing a mobile gig for about three or four people but these are fantastic for home use for general use in and around the house but

You can use powered speakers for mobile functions, but they'd have to be a lot bigger than this. That guy there is a 5-inch speaker. Ideally for mobile use, I would recommend 12-inch or above, 12-inch or 15 and horn, ideally. And what you do then, you'd have those on stands on what's known as a tripod. When you start to get into, say, bigger venues, then you're going to need to have bass cabs and then your mid and top as well. So there you go, a tiny look into an active speaker. The terminology really, active speaker is something that needs power to make it work. Inside an active speaker you will have the amplifiers necessary to get this working. As opposed to let's say something like this that hasn't got any amplifiers in so it has to have the amplifiers to make it work and of course like I said earlier

The amplifier is in here. So, a tiny bit of an insight. Like I said at the beginning of the video, let's see your speakers. Even if you've done a video ages ago and you've got your speakers halfway through the video, then post it underneath here. Practice and enjoy. Thank you.

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